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Homestarrunnerdotcom
Homestar Runner is a Flash-animated surreal comedy web series created by Mike and Matt Chapman (born and ), also known as The Brothers Chaps. It mixes surreal humor, self-parody, and references to the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s pop culture, in particular, video games, classic television, and popular music. While the site originally centered on the title character, Homestar Runner, the Strong Bad Email cartoon skits quickly became the site's most popular and prominent feature, with Strong Bad becoming a breakout character. Since 2000, the site has grown to encompass a variety of cartoons and web games featuring Homestar, Strong Bad, and numerous other characters. At the peak of its popularity, the site was one of the most-visited sites with collections of Flash cartoons on the web, spreading via word of mouth. The site sustains itself through merchandise sales and has never featured advertisements. The Brothers Chaps have turned down offers to make a television series. After a four-year hiatus beginning in 2010, Homestar Runner returned with a new Holiday Toon on April 1, 2014, for April Fools' Day. Afterward, co-creator Matt Chapman announced plans to give the site semi-regular updates starting in fall 2014, due to the positive reception given to the April Fools' Day cartoon. More cartoons have since been released on the website on an occasional basis, usually to celebrate holidays. The Brothers Chaps' early life They are originally from Indiana but now live in Atlanta, Georgia. Growing up in the 1980s, the Brothers Chaps were creating comic books, filming Super 8 movies and eventually toying with a video camera. The Brother Chaps' career Matt is the primary voice actor for Homestar Runner. For a time, he worked as a writer and director for the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!; he also worked for the Disney Channel animated series Gravity Falls and The Hub live-action series The Aquabats! Super Show!, where he also contributed occasional voice work and supporting acting roles. Most notably on The Aquabats! Super Show!, he played the main antagonist of the season one episode "CobraMan!", playing a sleazy carnival barker named Carl, whose voice and appearance were modeled directly after Strong Bad. Matt wrote the Wander Over Yonder episodes "The Bounty" and "The Timebomb" in collaboration with the show's writing staff. Matt also appeared in the second-season finale of Camp Camp, an animated series by Rooster Teeth, as the voice of Neil's father, Carl. Mike is responsible for half of the Adobe Flash animation, as well as the technical aspects of the Homestar Runner site. He also provides intentionally poor imitations of his brother's voice work for the Powered by The Cheat cartoon series on the website. Also, he has served as a writer for Yo Gabba Gabba!, and — like his brother Matt — has collaborated with the Wander Over Yonder staff, credited for writing the episode "The Liar". The brothers had a general development deal with Disney Television Animation and developed a series of short animations for Disney XD titled Two More Eggs which ran from 2015 to 2017. They have directed several music videos, including "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" by Of Montreal, "Experimental Film" (featuring the Homestar Runner characters, most notably Strong Sad) and "Figure Eight" by They Might Be Giants, "Brand of Skin" by Folk Implosion, and "LA Lindsay" by Y-O-U, the band who also collaborated with the brothers on Strong Bad Sings. History Development (1996–2003) Homestar Runner was created in Atlanta in 1996 by University of Georgia student Mike Chapman and friend Craig Zobel, who wrote the original picture book, The Homestar Runner Enters the Strongest Man in the World Contest while working summer jobs surrounding the 1996 Summer Olympics. Matt described the origin of the name "Homestar Runner" as an in-joke between themselves and James Huggins, a childhood friend of the Chapman brothers while growing up in Dunwoody, Georgia. "It actually comes from a friend of ours James. There was an old local grocery store commercial, and we live in Atlanta, and it advertised the Atlanta Braves. It was like, "the Atlanta Braves hit home runs, and you can hit a home run with savings here!" And so there was this player named Mark Lemke, and they said something like "All star second baseman for the Braves." And our friend James knows nothing about sports, and so he would always do his old-timey radio impression of this guy, and not knowing any positions in baseball or whatever, he would just be like, "homestar runner for the Braves." And we were just like, "Homestar Runner? That's the best thing we've ever heard!" The idea to use "Homestar Runner" for a children's book came while Mike and Craig were in a bookstore, and commented on how "terrible" the children's books were, prompting the idea to create their own. They spent around two hours designing the look of Homestar Runner, Pom Pom, Strong Bad, and the Cheat and completed the book within a day. They only printed about five to ten copies to share with friends and had no intention to publish it. However, they were unaware that their father had sent out the book as a manuscript for submission to about 80 different publishers, but they only got rejection letters back, if anything. They later used the Super NES video game Mario Paint to create the first cartoon featuring the characters. Around 1999, Mike recognized how popular Flash animation was taking off, and he and his younger brother Matt Chapman started to learn Flash on their own. Looking for something on which to practice, they found inspiration in the old children's book. Their initial cartoons were launched on their dedicated website, homestarrunner.com, by 2000. Mike animated the cartoons, Matt provided the voices of the male characters, and Mike's girlfriend (now wife) Missy Palmer provided the voice of Marzipan. They aimed to create the animations to resemble Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls and initially started with shorts that featured competitions between Homestar Runner as a heroic character and Strong Bad as the villain, but these did not really capture viewers. Mike and Matt came up with the idea of animating the scenes between competitions; Matt stated: "that was the stuff that was funnier, the stuff happening between the plot points, which is hilarious because we hadn't even established a routine of making cartoons about competitions, we'd made like one". From May 2000 to February 2001, the website and cartoons started out with different art styles. In February 2001, it gained a new look, which has largely remained consistent to the present with minor changes. The site grew slowly at first, and primarily through word-of-mouth. They were able to sell a "few dozen" T-shirts by 2001. Mike moved back to New York in mid-2001 and he and Matt started crafting the first Strong Bad Email some kinda robot, intending this to be a weekly feature. The Strong Bad Email series proved very popular, generating significant interest in the site; when the brothers were late in publishing a new Strong Bad Email, they received angry emails asking where the new short was, which Matt said was "a cool feeling to know you're as important as a cup of coffee or morning crossword to some folks". Their father suggested Matt quit his full-time job to devote time to creating more Homestar Runner shorts. With the number of visitors to the site growing, by January 2003 the site had outgrown its original web host, Yahoo!. Merchandise sales paid for all of the costs of running the website as well as the living costs of the creators, whose retired parents managed many of the business aspects. The brothers considered the period between 2002–2005 to be their most creative and successful, exploring various media for the shorts, and having a large quantity of merchandise. Matt considered a day in February 2004 to be the highlight of the series, having received a demo tape from They Might Be Giants for a song to use in a Strong Bad Email short, and a life-size replica of Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000 producer Jim Mallon on the same day. They also reflected on how Homestar Runner had been a common point of reference over which newly formed couples bonded, and how Joss Whedon incorporated references to Homestar Runner into his television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel as further signs of success. 2009−14 hiatus Through 2010, Homestar Runner remained financially viable for the brothers through sales of related merchandise. Both brothers were married by 2010 and had their children to care for, and they recognized that they would need to find other jobs to support their respective families. When Matt had a second daughter, the two agreed to put the series on hiatus, knowing they would want to come back to it but could not guarantee a time frame. Mike also noted that they had spent nearly ten years delivering a weekly cartoon, and believed that, creatively, they needed a break. The success of Homestar Runner led to Matt and Mike getting writing jobs for television animated series Yo Gabba Gabba!, Gravity Falls, The Aquabats! Super Show!, and Wander Over Yonder. During this hiatus, the brothers released a small number of Homestar Runner cartoons, including ones for 2010's April Fools' Day and Decemberween holidays. They also made a special video featuring Homestar and Strong Bad for the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con to introduce a panel regarding the history of W00tstock. 2014–present Matt, after completing work on Gravity Falls, moved back to Atlanta in 2014 where Mike was currently living, and the two agreed that they now had the opportunity to return to Homestar Runner on a semi-regular basis. It's first short in nearly four years, posted on April 1, 2014, poked fun at how they had not updated the site in years. Matt confirmed their commitment to continue the series on July 2014. Since then, the site has featured occasional updates, usually for holidays. Until 2017, this was mostly due to the brothers' involvement in developing the Disney XD animated show Two More Eggs. Trivia *Missy Palmer, Mike's wife, voice-acted Marzipan, who is Homestar's girlfriend. Category:Users that joined in 2007 Category:Male YouTubers Category:American YouTubers Category:YouTube Animators